[ applause ]
[Julia Keller:]
To read a novel by Umberto Eco is to enter an enchanted forest -
a symbol-drenched, passion-drowned forest that's alive with murmurings,
heavy with history and glittering with myth.
He writes of mad monks and museums of technology,
and, in his latest book, of night-shrouded cemeteries
that are filled with quivering, iniquitous souls.
He writes about things we all recognize - lust and greed and love - curiosity, envy.
His books may dazzle us with their erudition
but they also are entertainments - they're beguiling.
Now, if you're here today,
you already know all of this that I've just said, but,
I hope that after today's session
you're going to know him quite a bit better.
So, it's my great honor and privilege to ask you to join me
in welcoming to Chicago, Professor Umberto Eco.
[ applause ]
Professor, your new novel is, I think,
one that contains things that we all recognize.
It's seemingly set in the 19th century, but, The Prague Cemetery
of course, has things that sound eerily contemporaneous.
There are all kinds of conspiracies and cabals and plots
that are hatching all over the place.
So, my question for you is -
how in the world did you know this would be happening now?
[ rumble of laughter ]
[Umberto Eco:] If I wrote this novel, it was exactly because I believed that
it can happen and will happen now and in the future.
And, when writing, even though I made a lot of research
to dive practically into the 19th century and to live in that era,
I was continuously aware that I was telling about something around me,
and I was always thinking of somebody I know.
And, I would like that my reader used this novel as a guide -
as a Baedeker to go around to say -
"Oh look, one Simonini! Look, one Simonini! Look, one Simonini!"
You can do it in Italy, but you, I think that you can do it also
in Chicago, or in Washington, or in Paris or...
because then the... well, I have written largely on
the function that forgeries have had in the human history.
It's from the beginning.
Sometimes even they had a positive function.
For instance, inventing marvelous kingdoms
and people went to explore the world in order to find them -
the El Dorado myth and so on and so forth.
And, sometimes having terrible effects,
as in the case of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
So, I think that the...
everyday activity of many [...],
journalists, newspapers is to produce a fake dossier -
[ sporadic laughter ]
is to give fake news.
You know, being interested in the problem of languages -
I am a semiotician, so I am interested in various forms of communication -
I was interested in lying because it's a typical human activity.
[ laughter ]
No, a dog tells always the truth.
When a dog barks means that there is somebody outside.
I have never seen a dog who barks in order to cheat me
and to say that there was someone outside... no. [ to laughter ]
So, a dog is unable to lie.
We lie continuously even in everyday life: "Oh, nice to see you."
[ laughter ]
It's very polite, it's a very polite lie, okay?
"You look very well today" - we are lying for more reasons
and we are lying for terrible... so that the human life is...
completely filled up with lies and fake news and so and so forth.
That's my... the story of my Simonini was obviously an exceptional liar -
a professional liar.
[Keller:] Right. Maybe just as a... for those of you...
The Prague Cemetery is about,
if you want to just give it maybe a brief synopsis,
about this character in the 19th century who really in effect winds the clocks
of all the great conspiracies from the 19th century,
including that great forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and other forgeries.
And, all the bad things that happen in the world in the 19th century
could be at this character's feet.
And, a great part of the novel is his diary
and his musings on what he's doing and why,
including the great Latin phrase - "odi ergo sum - I hate therefore I am."
[ laughter ]
And, that's one of the phrases that struck me in thinking:
"Boy that sounds so much like what we hear today."
We hear a lot of the motivations for the
some the terrible events that are now rocking the world
And, all the other terrible activities that we think are so new
and so unprecedented, of course, have their origin many many centuries ago.
And, your other novels too, of course, deal with conspiracies
and the tendency of human beings to
not live up to our potential as moral beings.
[Eco:] Yes, well, at least one - the Foucault's Pendulum
But, it was in a way different
because it was on the paranoia of the universal conspiracy.
So, it was a grotesque representation of people who believe
or pretend to believe in a general conspiracy.
In this case, Simonini makes real conspiracies.
We have to make a very sharp distinction between
a conspiracy and the paranoia of the word "conspiracy."
Conspiracies exist.
In order to kill Julius Caesar, they made a conspiracy.
It was discovered the day after - or on the same day.
Catiline was making a conspiracy, Cicero denounced it in the Senate
and the conspiracy was probably in this moment
in Rome as in Washington where people are making conspiracies,
I don't know... to conquer a bank, to change a minister.
But, the paranoia of general conspiracy - the word "conspiracy" - is
there is somebody and we don't know which one,
who - in the world - is trying to organize everything
as a sort of a cult power who has all the responsibility -
we are not responsible.
That's why all the dictators used the idea of a general conspiracy
in order to not be criticized,
to keep their people united against somebody... somebody.
Yes, I, as a young boy, having been born in '32,
so, for the first 10 years of my life were under the fascist education.
It was educated to hate the conspiracy of the demo-pluto-Judeo democracies.
Democracy, plutocracy - the rich persons - and the Jews.
That was the world conspiracy.
And, well, we are celebrating...~ we were celebrating yesterday in Italy
a portentous event, by which I read in the newspaper
that people in the street were singing Handel's "Hallelujah."
[ sings ] Hal-le-lu-jah!
But he was continuously saying: "they are there, there they are
"menacing not only me, but you Italian."
So, you have to invent the conspiracy.
The Jewish conspiracy was on the great element of this paranoia,
not only in the 19th century,
but one of the documents were the "Protocols."
and they were certainly born in the second half of the 19th century.
They were, I say "certainly" because the only technical proof we have
is that they were published in Russia in 1905.
But all the concoction lasted for some decades,
let's say, from 1860, 1850 until the end of the century.
This uncertainty about the concoction
allowed me to invent a fictional story about...
I could attribute to Simonini many deeds
that were certainly accomplished by somebody else,
but we don't, we do never know exactly who they were...
because there were many, many hands at work.
It may be true.
I want to ask is,
we have such a short time here today and I wanted to mention too,
we're going to be taking questions from the audience
in just a couple of minutes after we've finished talking here,
and, if you would, if you do have a question,
Professor Eco would ask if you'd come down front
so to make sure he'll be able to hear you.
So, if you have questions percolating in the back of your mind,
just come forward in just a moment when we go to a question session.
I wanted to mention, you love, lists, long catalogs,
long litanies of things in your books.
They're filled with this, these beautiful long lists,
and you have a wonderful section--
[Eco:] I have written also a book on lists.
[Keller:] Exactly, I was saying and you talked about the reasons why
and when you pointed that out, I began to think of all the books
that do have lists in them that I hadn't really thought of.
"Moby Dick" is filled with long lists and Colin Harrison's "Manhattan Nocturne,"
long lists, and Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried" -
they have such power and I was curious,
but when when did you realize that? When did the list sort of
make itself known to you as more than a technique
but a kind of a poetical force?
[Eco:] A long time, a long time ago.
Now, I can tell you okay, the first, the paramount example of lists
is in Homer's Iliad
where is the so-called "catalog of ships."
What was the purpose of this list?
There were too many: it is impossible to name all of them.
So, my mouth has not enough tongues to tell of--
this is a poetical topos that returns, returns many times
in the history of literature.
They have not enough tongues to say,
and so, the list being always incomplete, even though very long,
must give you the sense of infinity.
In this sense, it is a beautiful resort,
a beautiful... literary strategy,
just in order to suggest infinity.
It is very difficult to suggest infinity without a list:
I think that the only one who succeeded
was Dante Alighieri at the end of the "Paradise"
when he's watching God and in three tercets
he says everything... without making a list.
But, it's a very exceptional case.
I think that I found first the lists and I became fond of them
because I started as a medievalist and by reading medieval poetry,
and it was full, it was a very...
And I remember that when I made in Harvard the Norton Lectures,
my first idea was to make them on lists,
then I abandoned the idea for many reasons.
And, two years ago, the Louvre
is and was organizing every year in November